Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Belle of the Ball in Bellevue

Lots of little announcements - hang on to your hats.

This coming weekend is the great, big, fabulous festival called the Bellevue Art Festival. It's really three separate shows happening around downtown Bellevue at the same time. There is a fine arts show at the parking garage of Bellevue Square. And there is another art festival (which just looks like more) set up across the street in the Cost Plus parking lot. And over on 6th Street is our show, called the Sixth Street Fair. It's 120 top notch artists, lots of food booths, and great music concerts too. Hours are:

I've been making up little "pedicure at home" gift sets to take to the Bellevue show this weekend. A little while back I laid out the whole secret to perfectly pretty peds. Basically it's soaking, pumicing and then super moisturizing. So I've put together the three products you need to pamper your tootsies -- Dead Sea Soaking Salts, the Pumice/Brush Foot Tool, and my Foot Balm. It's all tied up in this sweet little hemp tote bag for a rock bottom price of $15.00. I have about a dozen made up. If you simply must have one, call by Thursday noon and I'll set one aside for you. Otherwise they are with me in the big tent.

The salts are kind of a one-time only thing, I had just a few of these jars left over from some other big idea, the salts too, and they are scented with a very lovely combo of lavender and peppermint. There are enough that I've got about 20 extra jars and will be selling them for $4 each. Again, if you want just the salts but aren't planning on coming out to the show, give me a jingle and I would be happy to mail them. I won't bother putting either of these up on the web site, since there is such a small amount and they will go fast at this show, but if you are a blog reader, here's your special reward -- first dibs.

One other note - I mentioned in that same Pretty Feet post that I had added some wood accessories to the site - namely brushes, a soap dish and a boucle soap sack - which I will have on hand in Bellevue too. Just because. Mostly to see how well they do, and if people seem to like them before I order a bunch more for the site and fall shows. A test drive, so to speak. All of the accessories are here for a look- see.

I also mentioned the other day that I was going to add a 'lavender only' aromatic spray to the current menu. The French Lavender spray has now been added to the web site. And I'll have it with me at all the shows and markets starting this coming weekend in Bellevue. I'll continue to have the Sweet Dreams spray (which is a lavender/chamomile blend) at the shows for a bit. I'll be selling off most of the inventory I have stockpiled around here. And then it will become a "web-site only" product -- meaning that I will no longer have it for sale at shows, but you can still order it online. I would like to eventually phase out this particular scent, but don't want to disappoint folks who can't sleep without it. So we'll see how things turn out as the new spray is added. As long as there are still requests for it, I will have it on the web site, and can continue to custom make them (even one or two) for small orders. So no panic. Just trying to make everyone happy.

Finally, on the theme of lavender in that same post, I mentioned that you could put lavender oil directly on your skin as a first aid treatment for bug bites. Which I've known for a quite a long time, but hadn't really tried. Mostly because I don't really get bothered by bug bites any more. But the last few days with it being so hot, all the windows are open at night (no screens in these old windows) and the buggers have taken to stealth attacks while I am sleeping. I don't often get mosquito bites, but an occassional flea bite on the ankle makes me crazy, for days, itching the top off and making it worse. Yesterday evening before bed, I suddenly got a new flea bite and decided to try the lavender cure since I made such a noise about it. If the new fangled drug store creams didn't work, why not give this a go? And you know what? Instantly stopped itching. Within a minute or two the redness and irritation were gone. Completely gone. I was shocked. And when I woke up this morning, I had a new huge mosquito bite (or spider, but don't want to think about that) on my arm. Again, it was really quite swollen and itching like mad. So I went for that miracle lavender cure and bingo, within seconds it stopped itching and the big, bright red spot was half the size and no more redness. It's unbelievable.

I will make a small disclaimer. All the natural cures and remedies (and even the modern medicines, prescription drugs and whatnot) work a bit differently on each individual. So what works like a charm on one person, may not be that effective on the next one. There hasn't been a large amount of scientific study on the effects of all the essential oils, especially for first aid, so there is no "quantifiable" evidence that they work like clockwork, but centuries of people's own stories can't be that far off the mark. So if you are suffering from something, and haven't had luck with what's currently on the shelf? Why wouldn't you try everything at your disposal to see if it helps? You can buy lavender essential oil at herbal type shops (there's one at Pike Place market and also 15th on Capitol Hill), health food stores like PCC or Whole Foods usually has small vials, Zenith Supplies in the U Dist carries all kinds of supplies and oils. And of course, I have a few (very cheap!) vials of the oil myself in the sale section of the web site that you can still buy while the supply lasts.